720 q 50 v 37

[shridharb]

Just took my GMAT yesterday. 720 is disappointing
for me. I was scoring near 750 in GMAT prep. I think that
was mostly due to the repeat questions in verbal that I
scored high in GMAT prep.

I do think the actual GMAT was a bit harder.

Will post detailed debrief later.

[LoveMom]

Congrat to you :-)

You said that the test was a bit harder. Would you please compare the difficulty of each math and verbal section with that of what you have done?

Thanks.

[AdsCPA]

Congrats for great score......

[samarpan_bschool]

720 is a great score Congrats and all the best for your apps..

[mitzi]

It is an excellent score! Kudos for you.

[mini_india]

Congrats! It's a great score!

[shridharb]

Okay Here is my detailed debrief:
=============================
First of all, thanks Erin and others for this wonderful board. Its a great place to increase your awareness of GMAT. I gained a lot from this board.

I studied for GMAT for 1 month seriously and for about 2-3 months passivly before that. I didnt have more than 1/2 hr to study on week day nights, and more on the weekends. In all, I didnt even get to spend more than a few hours a day, except when I took the full length mocks.

In my last few GmatPrep's I was scoring 760-770 primarily because I was seeing a lot of repeat questions (in verbal) to which I knew the answers already. I this inflated my score quite a bit. A lot of GPrep questions are discussed on the boards here, so its very hard to come across questions in GPrep which you have not seen before. Not so in real GMAT, everything is new there! So be watchful of that.

Study Material: Manhattan SC guide, Og-11, Kaplan, Princeton

Test Day Experience:

Got to the center at 7.30 AM for my 8AM apptmnt. Got through paperwork etc in 10 minutes. They have an ungodly security system of palm print scanners and what not. In general they go to great length to make sure you dont cheat.

Started off with AWA argument essay. Went off pretty well. Followed my strategy of outlining my essay first on the notepad and writing it up. I had not done any writing essay in practice, this was my first real essay. I thought it went pretty well. Probably the easiest part of GMAT.

Took my first break. Supposed to be 8 minutes. There is a pretty elaborate process of signing out and signing in which eats into your break. I lost 1 minute for quant, thanks to that. Not happy about that! Be careful about your break time, just come back in 5 minutes sharp. Heck, they take away your watch, so that makes it even harder to keep track of time.

Quant section started off well. Nothing super complicated. A lot of DS questions, probably more than you would expect. This is how the GMAT quant is getting hard: a lot more DS than PS. If I were you, I would definitely focus a lot on DS. Anyways, I thought I picked up pace near the end, but still had to guess on the last question. Overall, no disaster here, I thought.
The quality of notepad and pen is not great, but not terrible either. I wish I had not lost that 1 minute from break, would have been anough time to do the last question correctly. No probability questions (or even P & C). A lot on inequalities, absolute values etc.

Another break. Had some food, drinks (starbucks mocha in can) and back at work for verbal. Had to draw my ABCDE grid on several pages, so that took a good half minute or so.

Anyway, verbal started off fine. The SC questions were clear and crisp. If you practiced hard, you will navigate pretty well. I thought some of the critical reasoning questions were a bit vague, so I felt like I wasnt 100% sure about them. Reading comprehension was OK, some of the passages were short, some long. The long ones seemed easy to understand. Anyways, time management is key in verbal. I came down to the last SC question, but I had to guess and move on. Overall, I was happy with my time mgmt, in the sense I was pretty close. I knew my verbal wasnt a disaster. In the GPrep, I used to finish it a good 5 minutes early because of questions that I had seen before elsewhere and I knew the answers. In that sense, GPrep may not be an accurate reflection of your real ability. No Bold Faced CRs for me.

Anyways, when 720 flashed, I was a bit bummed. 740+ would have put a smile on my face. Wasnt a disaster either, so no shocks there. Given the recent spate of horror stories, I was glad I didnt have another horror story.
For my applications, it may suffice, we shall see!

I was happy with q50, since that was my highest in mocks as well. V37 was low, V40 would have been a happy ending. Oh well!

Serious Advice To All: Do NOT take quant lightly, especially DS. Practice a lot. There is no other way around. DS questions need a particular procedure to be followed. Become an expert at that. In general, scoring q50, should not be a mystery.

For verbal, you can master SC and reading comprehension via practice and understanding the theory behind it. It needs a lot of time commitment. I guess I could have studied PowerScore critical reasoning bible, which I didnt do. There is really is no "theory" to be learnt about reading comprehension, just practice reading.

All the best to you all future GMAT takers. Let me know if you have any queries.

[samarpan_bschool]

good debrief. Thanks

[fashionista]

Hey Shiridharb,

First of all, congratulations on your score... You said that DS seemed much more important than PS on the test, so do you think that OG 12 Ds questions are enough and a good representative of the real test?

Thank you and good luck with your application.

[shridharb]

Fashionista:

yes, og11 and og12 are the best sources of DS questions. However the quantity is not enough. Only the last 50 or so are really representative of the real GMAT level. Try to focus on number properties, inequalities, abs values, geometry etc.